Watching Fox News this morning, I caught an interview with Army Captain Joshua Mantz (in the photo at left with Secretary Gates). Captain Mantz was patrolling in Bagdhad with the First Infantry Division on April 21, 2007, when he was hit by an armor-piercing bullet that killed Staff Sergeant Marlon Harper. Part of the same bullet that killed Sergeant Harper then exited, hit Captain Mantz and severed Mantz’s femoral artery. Captain Mantz bled out and went into a flatline condition for 15 minutes.

Here let me insert a footnote. Armor-piercing bullets arrived in Iraq from China courtesy of Iran. This is one more item in the very long account that the United States has yet to settle with Iran. It would be nice if the United States began to accord Iran the treatment it so richly deserves. You might say it’s time for Plan B. End of footnote.

What happened next to Captain Mantz is something like a miracle. Thom Shanker picks up the story in a New York Times At War blog post:

"I didn’t know that I was shot," Captain Mantz said. "I was simply confused and knew that something was wrong. I experienced tunnel vision, as my attention immediately focused on the face of Staff Sergeant Marlon Harper. I looked into his eyes with crystal clarity and watched as his lifeless body fell to the ground. I experienced auditory distortion, in that I could hear nothing except for the muted shot of the sniper round, and hear my own voice call for my medic. I also experienced slow-motion time. I could feel my body absorb the shock of the round as it hit my body. I could feel myself moving backwards."

Captain Mantz dragged Sergeant Harper out of the way and began to perform first aid on him while calling for assistance. "When my medic arrived, no more than 15 seconds later, I briefly passed out," Captain Mantz said. "I regained consciousness when my men carried me into the nearest Bradley Fighting Vehicle and drove to FOB Loyalty," the forward operating base that was their home in Baghdad.

During the 10-minute ride, the medic cinched-up a tourniquet and helped Captain Mantz stay conscious. "But I had to fight for every breath that I took," Captain Mantz said.

The convoy was met by a team of Army medical personnel who within seconds were administering CPR and electronic defibrillation.

"But by this time I could feel myself starting to die, and I became desperate in my struggle to stay conscious," he said. "We’re taught in Combat Lifesaver Training that the body will pull blood to the chest cavity during a catastrophic injury in order to protect the vital organs. I could actually feel this happening. It started with my legs. I could feel the blood creeping up from my legs to my chest cavity. When all the blood was gone, my legs locked-off. As the feeling crept up my body, it became harder and harder to breathe. The blood-creeping sensation moved to my quads, and they locked off. The feeling then crept to my stomach, and it locked-off. When the feeling moved to my stomach, it felt as if I was running wind sprints around a 400-meter track while breathing through a straw.

"I started to repeat three names in my head over and over again: My mom, my sister Melissa, and my sister Kendra. For the last 60 seconds of my life, I rapidly repeated these three names in my head. They helped me hold on a little longer and [I] knew I had to fight for them. But the feeling then crept to my chest, and I knew I was done. I calmly said my last thought, took my last breath, and died."

There is one question Captain Mantz said he gets every time anyone hears his story: Did he see a tunnel of white light? The sound of angels? A gateway to the afterlife?

"I had no out-of-body experience," he said. "Either that means it doesn’t exi[s]t or it means I need to change the way I am living."

The medical team working on Captain Mantz did not quit. "I don’t know what possessed the brigade surgeon and his team to continue working on a dead guy for 15 straight minutes – many doctors will ‘call it’ after 6 minutes because that’s usually the point at which brain damage sets in – but they kept going," Captain Mantz said.

When they restored a faint pulse, Captain Mantz was loaded onto a Black Hawk helicopter for a short flight into the Green Zone and more advanced emergency care. There, the military hospital team went through nearly 30 units of blood during a complicated vascular surgery. Blood was in short supply, and the medical team pulled soldiers into the surgery ward, drawing blood straight from their arms and putting it right into Captain Mantz. (He was ordered to take tests for a year to check for blood infections or disorders from the unprocessed transfusions, and he is fine.)

"Our military surgeons are gods in their profession," he said. "With the proper resources, they can – and do – bring soldiers back to life against impossible odds."

When he was stabilized, Captain Mantz was flown first to the larger military hospital at Balad, Iraq, north of Baghdad, and then to the military facility in Landstuhl, Germany, where it was determined that he had suffered no brain damage.

Shanker continues the story with Captain’s Mantz’s recuperation at Walter Reed and his return to service in Iraq with the same unit he was leading at the time of his injury.

On Fox News this morning, Captain Mantz discussed the mission he feels he was saved to perform. It is briefly mentioned in this Pratt Tribune account of Captain Mantz’s story. Captain Mantz seeks to help get assistance to soldiers struggling with the emotional and psychological aftereffects of battle and injury. No funding for centers devoted to helping soldiers with such issues has been provided to fill a recognized need. He wants to do something about it.

Shanker concludes his report with this view of Captain Mantz at Fort Riley alluding to his mission, also mentioned on Fox this morning:

Captain Mantz currently is assigned as aide-de-camp to Brig. Gen. David C. Petersen, the deputy commanding general of the First Infantry Division at Fort Riley, and is expecting to return to Iraq as a company commander early next year. In the meantime, he has decided to tell his story as often as anyone will listen.

A few weeks ago, Fort Riley hosted a counseling session for spouses and parents of those killed in combat. Captain Mantz was approached by a mother whose son had been killed by a high-powered improvised explosive. She said the explosion had severed both of his legs at the waist, and she had been tormented wondering what her son, a hard-charging, type-A personality, had felt and thought in his last moments.

"The question that bothered her for the last three years was, ‘I wonder if my son lost the will to live because he knew his legs were gone and knew he couldn’t walk ever again. I wonder if he gave up.’ I was able to look her straight in the eye, and tell her that I used to think the same thing. I used to think that I’d rather die than lose a limb in combat. But as soon as I was shot, that thought went completely out of the window. I couldn’t have said to the doctor fast enough, ‘Take my leg! I’ll figure the rest out later!’ As I answered her question, I could see it in her eyes that I gave her a little bit of closure. And that was a question that only I could answer."

While others ask him questions, there is one he asked himself: Why am I still here?

"I never thought I’d get an answer to that question until that mother walked up to me that day," Captain Mantz said. "Your experiences are valuable in ways you may not realize yet. I strongly encourage you to talk about them. You’ll never know who you’re going to help."

Here’s hoping word of Captain Mantz and his mission finds the wider audience it deserves

Wow, maybe this guy isn’t so bad after all.   NOT ! !

Arlen, I don’t think this smiley picture is going to help.

Say cheese, come on guys say cheese; that’s it , as you were.

By Thomas Fitzgerald

Sen. Arlen Specter is making his last stand before a new "jury," as he has called it, of Democratic primary voters. Until a year ago, they were the enemy.

With the hours slipping away until the polls open Tuesday, Specter finds himself in a tight race with Rep. Joe Sestak, despite the untold millions of dollars he has brought to Pennsylvania over three decades of service, the support of the White House, and backing from almost every union and Democratic organization.

Specter, it turns out, is haunted by his Republican past. Many Democrats, habituated to voting against him, are skeptical of a man they hold responsible for helping put conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, John G. Roberts Jr., and Samuel A. Alito Jr. on the Supreme Court, and for supporting the economic policies of former President George W. Bush.

"It’s hard to convince the Democrats who vote in closed primaries in midterm-election years that he is one of them," said Lara M. Brown, a political science professor at Villanova University. "These are loyal, year-in-year-out Democrats, and many feel they can’t get a fix on where he stands."

Analysts say Specter also faces something even bigger than managing a party change: a toxic environment for incumbents of both parties. Sen. Robert Bennett (R., Utah) was toppled last week; Rep. Alan Mollohan (D., W. Va.), renowned for bringing home federal money, also fell; and Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D., Ark.) is imperiled by a primary challenger from her left.

In short, the election has not really been about Sestak, a former Navy admiral, or even the issues; the stated positions of the two men are almost indistinguishable, standard-issue Democrat. It is and always has been, analysts say, a referendum on Specter.

And he has shifted his positions. During 28 years as a Senate Republican, Specter voted 58 percent of the time with the Republican position, according to Congressional Quarterly. That rose to 70 percent in the final two years of Bush’s term. Since converting, he has backed the Democratic position a little more than 95 percent of the time.

Still, Specter enjoyed a double-digit lead in the polls until recently, though beneath the head-to-head matchup were contradictory data. Most voters told pollsters it was time for a new senator, but Democrats gave him approval ratings in the 70s.

Then came The Ad.

Made by Philadelphia’s the Campaign Group, the 30-second spot shows Specter, as a Republican, endorsed by then-President Bush as a "firm ally," then arm in arm with Bush and then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.). Footage follows of Specter saying, with a satisfied grin, "My change in party will enable me to be reelected." The tagline: Specter switched to "save one job . . . his . . . not yours."

When he switched in April 2009, after his decisive vote for President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan had destroyed his standing in the GOP, Specter said he could not win reelection in a Republican primary. He also said that he wanted to continue to do good things for the state and nation, and that the GOP had moved too far to the right for moderates like himself.

But it is the bluntly honest remark about reelection that has stuck, especially after Sestak reinforced it with $1.6 million in advertising.

"From the time he savaged Anita Hill, I decided I’d never vote for him," said Democrat Patricia Bannon, 85, of Westtown, recalling Specter’s tough 1991 questioning of the woman who challenged Thomas’ court nomination. "He was a Republican then, so it didn’t matter. Now he’s a Democrat and he can wave around Obama or whoever he wants, I’m not voting for him."

Specter would have been better off had he finessed his party switch, said Democratic strategist Mark Nevins.

"He never took the time to convince voters that it was a principled decision based on values, shared beliefs, and common goals," Nevins said. "He was very up-front about the personal benefit. There was enough cynicism to it to make Democratic voters question whether this guy really shared their values."

Specter has countered Sestak’s "switch" ad with one of his own, featuring Obama crediting him with "helping pull us back from the brink" with the stimulus vote. "I love Arlen Specter," Obama says.

By the time the polls close, that image will have been seen by the average broadcast TV viewer in the Philadelphia market 12 times – and more in Pittsburgh, Scranton, and Erie – according to summaries of the campaigns’ ad buys. Sestak’s latest ad will be close to that number in all those markets but Erie.

The campaign became a slugfest about character. In Sestak’s telling, Specter has no principles. In Specter’s telling, Sestak lost a top Navy post because he treated subordinates poorly, has missed 127 votes in the House, and pays his campaign workers below the minimum wage.

While portraying himself as taking the high road, Sestak also stoked the implicit issue of Specter’s age and health; the senator, 80, has survived two bouts of Hodgkin’s lymphoma and a brain tumor. Sestak, 58, rarely fails to mention his admiration of Specter’s "long service" and says it’s time for "new blood." In his last two TV ads, Sestak has used mug shots of a bald and haggard Specter, taken when he was recovering from chemotherapy in 2008.

In his closing ad, which boasts of Sestak’s higher ratings by various Democratic interest groups, the campaign also presses the message that Specter has been around too long. A narrator calls the congressman "the best Democrat for Pennsylvania’s future." Sestak himself says, "It’s time for a new generation of leadership."

To Specter, the use of the post-chemo pictures was low.

"There’s a great deal of latitude in politics, but it’s way below the belt to publish a picture of a guy when he was bald, when all his hair has since grown back," Specter said Friday in an interview. "Way below the belt, but typical of my opponent."

If he is to survive, Specter will need a big vote from Philadelphia, his place of residence and his strongest area, and other urban centers. His campaign combined forces with the state AFL-CIO and state and national Democratic groups to knock on 20,000 doors last weekend, and will hit 20,000 more by the end of this weekend, campaign manager Chris Nicholas said.

Sestak has built networks of volunteers across the state, but he has spent the bulk of his cash, a little more than $4 million so far, on TV and radio ads.

One thing in Specter’s favor is the intangible: He’s been here before. Specter has a habit of winning close races in which his political obituary has been pre-written. He beat Democrat Lynn Yeakel in 1992, the "Year of the Woman," by 3 percentage points. In 2004, Specter beat Rep. Pat Toomey, 51 percent to 49 percent, in the GOP primary.

This time, it will likely come down to whether Specter has made enough Democrats comfortable with him as a Democrat.

Specter has won over Vincent Johnson, 45, an investigator for the City Controller’s Office, who was lunching Friday on potato soup in JFK Plaza, where Sestak was campaigning. Johnson cited Specter’s support for the stimulus, the health-care overhaul, and Obama’s agenda.

"I’m willing to forgive him for having been a Republican as long as he’s willing to work for the American people, at the side of the president," Johnson said. "And he is."

Were not here yet ?

Eugene Volokh • April 30, 2010 4:28 pm

I remember very little about my childhood in the Soviet Union; I was only seven when I left. But one memory I have is being on a bus with one of my parents, and asking something about a conversation we had had at home, in which Stalin and possibly Lenin were mentioned as examples of dictators. My parent took me off the bus at the next stop, even though it wasn’t the place we were originally going.

Perhaps I have some of the details wrong (was it just Stalin, or also Lenin?); childhood memories remembered 35 years later are like that. I’m telling this to explain why I feel so strongly about it, based on my memories; my personal account does not affect the soundness (or unsoundness) of my arguments. But my sense from all I’ve heard is that this is exactly how life was like there, and that no-one who lived there in the 1970s would think the scenario at all improbable.

What’s more, this is so even though most people, including most Communists, knew that Stalin was of course a dictator. The government itself had acknowledged as much. Even Lenin was widely understood to have been a dictator in the sense of someone who didn’t govern through democratic means.

But it’s not the sort of thing that you’d want to say in public, or even to your friends in private. Sssh! — people might hear! Those who hear might draw deeper inferences about what else you might believe. This might get back to the place you work. You might be fired, or blacklisted. By the 1970s, you probably didn’t have to worry much about being shot, or being sent to Siberia; these were not the 1930s. But lost jobs, ruined careers — sure. And a forced public apology: well, of course, that might help a bit.

Yet the public revelation of a private conversation; the public condemnation by management; the obvious danger of serious career ramifications; the apology, which I take it came out of a fear of those ramifications — all for daring to say to friends something that simply represents a basic scientific principle (the need to be open to the possibility that there are racial differences in intelligence, as one is open to other possibilities on other scientific questions) — that just sounded a little too familiar to me.

It’s a pale echo, but of something so bad that we should be wary even of pale echoes. Say, comrade, didn’t I see you reading The Bell Curve and the articles criticizing it? Would you say that this means you “do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent”? Tsk, tsk, comrade, I wonder what the Dean will say. But don’t worry! Perhaps if you publicly apologize, all will be forgiven.

Now of course all societies, even the freest, have their taboos. I’m deeply and constantly grateful to my parents for having brought me to a place that treats many fewer ideas as taboo than the Soviet Union did, or that nearly all societies throughout human history have done. And I understand why this taboo is indeed present in our society.

But that doesn’t make it right, and it doesn’t make it right for me to sit quietly, enjoying my tenured professorship, while this is happening.

I say it again: The student’s e-mail expressed an openness to a possibility that has to be understood as a scientifically plausible possibility. Whatever one might suspect about any other beliefs the author might have, that is a highly unreliable suspicion (given that the e-mail is just a portion of a broader conversation, to the rest of which we were not privy), and one that cannot properly form the basis of the sort of public condemnation that the e-mail has received.

And whenever our society labels as taboo an openness to scientific possibilities, even possibilities that are undoubtedly fraught with possible bad consequences — whenever important institutions in our society publicly condemn people for their openness to such possibilities, against a background of possible career retaliation — our society makes itself less free, and makes its science less reliable.

Whether one is interested in the topic or not, when we mention butts and sexual/sensual pleasure most people imagine anal intercourse, which is a specialized skill set.

Never quite looked at it as a skill set.

BTW my wife passed the exam for the learners license but never took the driving test because of a little accident while I was teaching her to drive but that is beside the point.

There is a moral to this story.  If you don’t make it too easy most people will work harder to achieve what is important to them.  In other words, the cream will come to the top and we will all be better for it.

That is the way it used to be!

While watching the grilling of the CEO of Goldman Sacks I was, almost totally discussed with both sides, for a number of reasons. First of course are the demagogues sitting behind those Cherry Wood Pulpits pontificating and pointing their crooked index fingers at the obviously lower than life scoundrels that are, sheepishly, sitting down from them. They are obviously guilty because they were made to stand and raise their right hands and pledge ‘to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me blank’. Moreover, of course, we all know that they would not tell anything like the truth unless they had to or go to prison. I am surprised that they do not make them wear orange jumpsuits. The only thing that gets me angrier is that these low lives, and some of them probably are, sit there and don’t defend themselves at all. They almost throw up their arms and say please don’t hurt me, I’ll agree with whatever you say about me; just don’t hurt me.

In addition, some of these, lords of government, were the main cause of the mortgage melt down which has caused this financial crisis. The idea that everybody deserves a home of his own, no matter what. I heard the committee chairperdaught of the subcommittee tell a reporter that it was terrible that this bank in Washington State was giving out home loans to people that they knew could not afford the homes. My God, that is what the government was forcing them to do. You make loans to people in our neighborhood or you will not be able to do business there and if you do not give loans to the people we want you to were might look in your books.

I have to go on to something else because my teeth are starting to hurt, if I had any.